Air Canada Aeroplan Buy Miles (Disaster) Update

Air Canada was late in the game of selling its Aeroplan miles, which started just this past March (read more here).

Air Canada decided to launch its first-ever sale today (read more here), and the response was so overwhelming that it crashed Points.com’s servers.

You can access Aeroplan’s page for buying miles here.

Aeroplan is trying to make it right, and everyone who bought miles between 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM will get their bonus increased to 90% even if it was 65% at the time of purchase.

Here’s a note that we received from Air Canada spokesperson:

We all believed that the two initial tranches of miles would sell out very quickly—and indeed they did.  Unfortunately, the response was so overwhelming that several members were unable to participate in the promotion, despite our joint effort with Points to add systems capacity in-advance of the sale.

This was some of the highest traffic that our partner, Points.com has ever seen (more details on that to come)! We’re so grateful for the response, but there are no excuses for the access issues, and we own that. We apologize for this and would like to make it right with our members.  Specifically:

1. all miles purchased between 11-12pm at the 65% bonus rate will automatically be increased to a 90% bonus. In other words, in case a customer was trying to purchase at the 90% bonus and was unable to, we are taking care of them and ensuring they get even more miles (note: the issues ended within the first hour of the sale). It will take us some time to reach-out and deposit the additional miles.

2. along with our partner Points, we will be donating an additional 1 million miles donation to our Aeroplan Member Donation program charity – The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health Foundation (CAMH).

We’ve learned a lot from this and can’t wait to share more bonus opportunities in the future.

Plus, don’t forget that until May 31, all Aeroplan members can reach Air Canada Altitude status (or move up to the next status level) via Aeroplan’s Travel at Home campaign. 50% of the total miles purchased through this Buy Miles promotion will count towards our Travel at Home status offers.

For those who haven’t had a chance to buy miles, you can still visit: https://www.aeroplan.com/buy-gift-miles.do#/

Conclusion

The price of a mile under this sale was right, especially if you managed to get the 115% or 90% bonus.

Surprisingly, Points.com was having technical issues because of the response due to their usual robust infrastructure (they handle most points and miles sales and cannot remember any other previous problems).

Glad that selling miles work for Air Canada. There must have been some pend up demand.